I did try and ask for help when my brother used to beat me up, but I was either told to hit him back or screamed at for getting into a fight with him in the first place. So I stopped.

When I was being bullied at school, I asked my parents for help; one said ‘You have to learn to fight your own battles’, the other said ‘You have to learn to behave like a lady’. Confusing much? Neither suggestion helped, but both pretty much embedded it into my skull that I was on my own as far as the schoolyard was concerned.

When the dirty old bastard next door used to leer at me, lurking around the dark alley I had go through to get home and asking to see inside my knickers, I didn’t ask for help. What would be the point? Kids were always wrong, grown ups are always right and I’d probably get a right earful for it if I told my Mum, so I kept schtum.

I never asked for help with my homework. That privilege went to my brother as I was expected to leave school at sixteen, get a ‘nice little job’ in a shop or something until I got married. I’m still shit at making myself study to this day, because, deep down, I don’t believe in myself or that I’m worth educating.

I didn’t ask for help when I split from my first boyfriend. My Mum always thought me too feisty and undeserving to keep C, so she would alway gloat and give me the whole ‘told you so’ lecture when we used to fall out. I don’t think she understood how someone like me got a man that looked like him, which probably tells you a lot about how I came to have such shitty, low self esteem. I don’t think either of my parents ever told me I was beautiful.

Ever.

I didn’t ask for help from anyone when my Mum was sick with cancer. No one was coping at home, my Dad was apoplectic with rage most of the time and I’d regularly get scolded and humiliated at school for having a creased/dirty uniform, forgetting my homework or not bring the right things for cookery class. It honestly didn’t even occur to me to tell them why and they certainly didn’t ask.

I didn’t ask for help when my Mum’s best friend tried to kiss me in a most inappropriate way when she popped by to visit her in hospital. And she did it when Mum was actually in the room! And when I come to think about it, I had no idea what she was doing, so I couldn’t have been more than 14 and rather repulsively, it was probably my first proper kiss. If Mum saw, she never said a word. Mary was her best friend, and besides, being the most naive person on the planet and a Catholic to boot, she tended to deny the existence of homosexuality anyway.

I did ask for help from my second boyfriend when my Mum’s death was imminent and I desperately needed someone to be there for me for once in my life. His response? ‘I don’t think I can come to your house because it will probably be quite depressing.’

Thirty five years on and I’ve never forgotten that moment, and even when he eventually turned up ‘Because my Mum said I should’ the die was cast.

The moment she left this lfe, I turned to a living, breathing human fortress. For a good twenty years I kept my guard up, kept my own council, let no one in and made sure I survived.
And I coped. Because I had to. Because everything leading to that moment taught me that I could never really rely on anyone other than myself.

It has only been very recently that I allowed myself to let my guard down. And I am usually so pathetically grateful for even the tiniest bit of support, that I’m still making it clear to both myself and others that I neither expect or deserve their help so they end up thinking that they are Mother Teresa or Bob fucking Geldof if they send me the odd text asking how I am.

But, encouraged by some of these small kindness that came my way after my breakdown, I finally asked for proper help from someone.

A friend.

Someone I thought I could trust. That would support me the way I had and I would still support her.

I say ‘proper help’; I actually, in the depths of despair, and in genuine fear that I would die of loneliness, when she asked me if there was anything she could do, I asked that if she hadn’t heard from me for a few days, I’d probably hit the wall mentally and emotionally, and if that happened would she please maybe swing by, pick me up and drag me out to a movie or for a walk in the park or something?

Silence.

Horrified, exposed, humiliated and furious with myself, I immediately back tracked, saying she didn’t have to do it, I knew she was busy and I was hard to be around when I was like that, etc., etc.

She replied saying that she was sorry for the silence, that of course it wasn’t too much to ask and that she’d be in touch when she got back from her business trip.

You can guess what happened, can’t you?

Not only did she not keep her promise but she’d kept arranging to see me then cancelling last minute, so many times that when it came to a head one weekend when she did it twice in two days, I ended up thinking that I couldn’t who I hated more. Her or myself.

I reeled back wounded, decided to keep her at a distance (not that she noticed) and we gradually lost touch.

Until now.

I’ll see her again in the near future when we meet up with a mutual friend.

I’ll be as warm and chatty as I can.

We’ll update one anohter on each others lives and on the surface of things, build bridges.

But my walls are back up.

She’ll never see the whites of my eyes again.

Though it’s unlikely anyone will again to be fair as even God legs it when I ask for his aid.

I am a rock and the knowledge that this is so is probably the one thing in this world I CAN rely on.

So whilst I’d love to think that one day, I will be able to ask for help and for that request to be fulfilled, in the meantime, I hold strong. And endure.

“My Life”

What I choose to do is of no concern to you and your friends Where I lay my hat may not be my home, but I will last on my own

‘Cause it’s me, and my life it’s my life

Oh the world has sat in the palm of my hand not that you’d see and I’m tired and bored of waiting for you and all those things you never do

My therapy journey, recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I write for welldoing.org , for Planet Mindful magazine, and for Muse Magazine Australia, under the name Clara Bridges. Listed in Top Ten Resources for BPD in 2016 by goodtherapy.org.

My therapy journey, recovering from Borderline Personality Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I write for welldoing.org , for Planet Mindful magazine, and for Muse Magazine Australia, under the name Clara Bridges. Listed in Top Ten Resources for BPD in 2016 by goodtherapy.org.